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From Conditionality to Modality in Luganda (Bantu, JE15): a Synchronic and Diachronic Corpus Analysis of the Verbal Prefix-Andi

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From Conditionality to Modality in Luganda (Bantu, JE15): a Synchronic and Diachronic Corpus Analysis of the Verbal Prefix-Andi Journal of Pragmatics 127 (2018) 84e106 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma From conditionality to modality in Luganda (Bantu, JE15): A synchronic and diachronic corpus analysis of the verbal prefix-andi- * Deo Kawalya a, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver b, c, , Koen Bostoen b a School of Languages, Literature and Communication, Makerere University, PO Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda b BantUGent e UGent Centre for Bantu Studies, Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Rozier 44, 9000 Ghent, Belgium c Department of African Languages, University of Pretoria, 0002 Pretoria, South Africa article info abstract Article history: This article offers a synchronic and diachronic analysis of the use and meaning of the Received 29 November 2016 verbal prefix-andi- in the Great Lakes Bantu language Luganda (JE15). On the basis of a text Received in revised form 18 January 2018 corpus of 4 million tokens, we show that the prefix, commonly described as a conditional Accepted 29 January 2018 marker, is primarily involved in the expression of modal meanings, specifically deontic Available online 23 February 2018 necessity and epistemic possibility. Our thirteen-decade diachronic corpus analysis shows that there is a relationship between the increased use of -andi- outside syntactically Keywords: complex conditional constructions, i.e. those having both a protasis and an apodosis, and Modality Conditionality an increase in its expression of modal meanings. Moreover, a reduction in the use of -andi- Protasis in complex conditional constructions goes hand in hand with a reduction in its expression Apodosis of conditional meanings. It is further revealed that contrary to the common cross-linguistic Diachronic corpus study tendency to rely on modality as a source for conditionality, the conditional meaning of Luganda -andi- is not post-modal. Instead it was primarily a conditional marker, which subse- quently developed different modal meanings. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. On the interplay between conditionality and modality Several typological studies have dealt with conditionality as a meaning typically originating in modality (Bybee et al.,1994; Traugott, 1985), more specifically as a post-modal destination for either epistemic possibility or epistemic necessity (van der Auwera and Plungian, 1998: 98). In Bantu linguistics, the historical relationships between modal and conditional markers have not raised much interest so far. Modality and conditionality have at best each been dealt with in isolation. In this article, we show that the Ugandan Bantu language Luganda has a verbal prefix-andi- that is neither a dedicated conditional marker nor a dedicated modal marker, contrary to what has been described in the literature. As we show on the basis of a Luganda text corpus, it currently straddles the semantic domains of modality and conditionality. What is more, we argue, by means of a * Corresponding author. BantUGent e UGent Centre for Bantu Studies, Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Rozier 44, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (D. Kawalya), [email protected] (G.-M. de Schryver), koen.bos- [email protected] (K. Bostoen). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.01.011 0378-2166/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. D. Kawalya et al. / Journal of Pragmatics 127 (2018) 84e106 85 Abbreviations and symbols APPL applicative AUGx augment of class x CF counterfactual(ity) CONN connective DEMa proximal demonstrative DEMb medial demonstrative DeNe deontic necessity EPo epistemic possibility FV final vowel H high tone HYP hypothetical(ity) INFj infinitive IPFV imperfective LOCx locative of class x N homorganic nasal NEAR_FUT near future NEAR_PST near past NEG negative NEUT neuter NPx nominal prefix of class x Ø zero/empty morph OPx object prefix of class x PASS passive PFVj perfective PL plural POSSx possessive of class x PPx pronominal prefix of class x PRS present RECP reciprocal REFL reflexive RELx relative of class x REM_FUT remote future REM_PST remote past SG singular SPx subject prefix of class x TA(M) Tense, Aspect (, Modality) UNR the unreality marker -andi- diachronic corpus analysis, that the conditional meaning of -andi- is not post-modal. Quite the contrary, it used to be pri- marily a conditional marker, which subsequently developed different modal meanings, such as deontic necessity and epistemic possibility. In other words, we present here language-specific counterevidence for the common cross-linguistic tendency to rely on modality as a source for conditionality. 1.2. On conditionality Various definitions and typologies of conditionals exist (see Comrie, 1986; Dancygier, 1993,1998; Declerck and Reed, 2001; Salone, 1979; Sweetser, 1990, among others). This is partly due to the large number of criteria that can be used to categorize and interpret conditionals. Formulating a precise and universally applicable definition of conditionals has proven to be extremely difficult, not to say impossible (Declerck and Reed, 2001: 8). Proposing such a definition is neither an aim nor a necessary condition for the current study. We have deemed it more meaningful to first present those typologies of condi- tionality that have informed our research on Luganda conditionals as it proceeded. A classic and widely used distinction is the one between simple, hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals. It also underlies the work of Salone (1979) on Haya (JE22), a Tanzanian Bantu language closely related to Luganda, which is one of the rare dedicated studies on conditionals in Bantu, along with his subsequent dissertation on conditionals in Swahili (G42d) (Salone,1983a ). For simple conditionals, he states that “a proposition results if another proposition holds”, as shown in (1) and (2). Hypothetical conditionals, as in (3), on the other hand, are those “in which the antecedent introduces a hypothetical or 86 D. Kawalya et al. / Journal of Pragmatics 127 (2018) 84e106 imaginary proposition (where that proposition is not assumed to be false)”. Counterfactual conditionals refer to “sentences in which the antecedent asserts a proposition which is assumed to be false”, as in (4). Salone (1979) further adopts another common distinction, i.e. between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ conditionals. Semantically, so-called ‘Unreality Conditionals’ include future simple conditionals (2), hypotheticals (3) and counterfactuals (4). Structurally, however, future simple conditionals (2) do not make use of a syntactic marker of unreality, unlike other semantic types of unreal conditionals. Hence, syntactically, they resemble semantically real conditionals, such as the simple present conditional in (1). (1) If the sun shines, the birds sing. (2) If you go to the store, I will cook. (3) If I saw Sidney Poitier in person, I'd faint. (4) If he had cooked, I would have eaten. (Salone, 1979: 65;66) Another often cited definition is the one by Comrie (1986: 78) who conceives conditionals from a logical perspective as “a relation between two propositions, the protasis (p) and the apodosis (q), such that either p and q are both true, or p is false and q is true, or p is false and q is false; excluded is the possibility of p being true and q is false.” In his attempt at a cross- linguistic characterization of conditionals, he adds, as a further restriction to his definition in natural language, that “the content of the protasis must be interpretable as a cause of the content of the apodosis” (Comrie, 1986: 80). He identifies four major parameters necessary for the description and categorization of conditionals; namely clause order, marking of condi- tionality, degrees of hypotheticality and time reference. In contrast to Comrie's basically semantic definition, Dancygier (1993: 403), whose work we have only discovered in the course of writing the current article, primarily defines a conditional in formal-structural terms as “a complex sentence composed of the main clause (q, or the apodosis) and a subordinate clause (p, or the protasis) introduced by a conditional conjunction, which in the majority of conditional sentences in English is if” (see also Dancygier, 1998: 1). Two parameters inform this English-based definition, viz. the presence of if, which signals the speaker's non-assertiveness of the assumption in the protasis and the syntactic frame if p, then q, which signals a semantic or pragmatic relation between p and q, whereby q can only be asserted after assuming p. Dancygier further subdivides conditionals on functional grounds into predictive and non-predictive conditionals. Formally, predictive conditionals are characterized in terms of backshift, that is, “the time reference intended by the speaker is systematically later than the time referred to by the verb form in its prototypical (non- conditional) uses” (Dancygier, 1993: 406). Semantically, clauses in predictive conditional constructions are said to exhibit sequential and causal relations, such that the proposition in the protasis precedes the proposition in the apodosis (Dancygier, 1993: 412). All sentences in (1) to (4) above are classified as predictive in Dancygier's typology; in addition to all of them exhibiting sequential and causal relations, (2) to (4) also exhibit backshift. Sentence (5) is an example of a non-predictive conditional. In such conditionals, the kind of backshift exhibited in pre- dictive conditionals does not occur. In this sentence, the verb forms refer to the time that they indicate; the verb in the protasis is in the present and it also refers to the present, while the verb in the apodosis indicates past and also refers to the past. (5) If she is in the lobby, the plane arrived early. (Dancygier, 1993: 415) In non-predictive conditionals, there is also a lack of content relation between the assumptions expressed in the clauses. In conditional constructions like (5), where events are presented in reversed chronological order, causality cannot arise according to Dancygier (1993: 423), because no sequentiality of events is indicated by the sequence of clauses.
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